Haremhabs Contemporaries

Haremhab and the Crown Prince Sheshonk. According
to this reconstruction, Haremhab began his career under the last kings
of the Libyan Dynasty. We get a first glimpse of him in the tomb of the
prince Sheshonk, son of Osorkon II and his wife Karoma. The prince, named
as successor to his father, died young, still during his fathers
reign, and never assumed the royal diadem. The king built for him a funerary
chamber in Memphis, where the prince had served in his lifetime as the
high priest of Ptah. The excavations of Samaria, discussed above,
revealed that the Libyan king Osorkon II was not a contemporary of Ahab,
as is usually asserted, but reigned after the time of Jeroboam IIi.e.,
after ca. -744, which marks the death of Jeroboam II, but before the destruction
of Samaria by the Assyrians in -722.

The tomb was discovered in 1942, and its clearance and
publication were entrusted to Ahmad Badawi.(1)
At the entrance to the tomb, on the lintel of the doorway, Badawi found
an incised relief showing Haremhab kneeling in front of a talbe bedecked
with offerings; behind Harmhab can be seen the deceased prince, also in
a kneeling position. Haremhabs cartouche is somewhat damaged; a
deliberate attempt had been made to erase it. But from what remains Badawi
could identify the figure in front of the crown prince as that of Haremhab.

In the accepted scheme of history Haremhab is supposed
to have reigned some six hundred years before the funeral chamber for
Prince Shoshenk, son of Osorkon II, was built. But what incentive would
the builder of the tomb have to decorate the monument with the figure
of Haremhab and his cartouche? This king did not enjoy such reputation
that six centuries after his death a Libyan prince should prominently
show himself and Haremhab in an offering scene. There was nothing in the
memory of Haremhab that an occupant of a tomb of about -725 would consider
as bringing salvation or possessing magic against unclean spirits. Therefore
Haremhabs figure and cartouche in a Libyan tomb made historians
wonder and grope for a solution.

One detail needs an explanation: Haremhab is depicted
as a king, his name enclosed inside a cartouche, sign of royal powerthis
at least twenty-five years before his appointment as king by Sennacherib.
One could assume from this that he was a viceroy of Memphis under the
last Libyan kings, continuing in that position under the Ethiopians, until
his defection to the Assyrian side in -702. As such he could well have
enjoyed the privilege of using the insignia of royalty.

Haremhab and Tirhaka. In this reconstruction
Haremhab and Tirhaka, the Ethiopian, are contemporaries; in the conventional
version of history they are separated by more than six centuries, Haremhab
being dated to the late fourteenth and Tirhaka to the early seventh. A
certain scene, carved on one of the walls of a small Ethiopian temple
at Karnak, shows them together. The scene proves not only the contemporaneity
of Haremhab and Tirhaka, but also permits to establish a short period
in their relations from which it dates. De Rouge in his 1873 study of
the monuments of Tirhaka, describes the relief:

Tirhaka is standing and takes part in a paneguric. An important
personage, named Hor-em-heb, a priest and hereditary governor, addresses
to the people the following discourse in the name of the two forms of
Amon: Hear Amon-ra, Lord of the Thrones of the World and Amon-ra,
the husband of his mother, residing in Thebes! This is what they say
to their son, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt [Neferatmukhure] son
of the sun, Tirhaka, given life, forever: You are our son whom
we love, in whom we repose, to whom we have given Upper and Lower Egypt;
we do not like the kings of Asia _ _ _(2)

The monument must be dated to the time early in Haremhabs
career when he was acting as priest and governor under his brother Sethos.
Egypt was then allied with Ethiopia, actually under Ethiopian domination,
and was bracing itself to meet the armies of Assyria; for Sennacherib
had shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage and
was advancing to the border of Egypt. The Egyptian-Ethiopian army which
had gone to block him had suffered a crushing defeat at Eltekeh in Palestine.
The declaration We do not like the kings of Asia was appropriate
for the moment. The ways of Tirhaka and Haremhab would soon part: Tirhaka
would flee to Ethiopia and become the bitterest enemy of Haremhab, who
would go over to the side of Sennacherib and campaign against the Ethiopian
king and his own brother Sethos.

The Tomb of Petamenophis. Of the hundreds
of rock-cut tombs crowding the Theban necropolis, the Valley of the Kings,
one bearing the name of Petamenophis, a high official of the Ethiopian
time, early attracted the attention of Egyptologists by its large size
and ambitious layout. It was first described in detail by Lepsius in his
pioneering work Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien.(3)
To have occupied a spatious tomb in this prestigious location, Petamenophis
must have been a person of distinction. In his inscriptions he describes
himself as Sealbearer and Sole Beloved Friend, Lector and Scribe
of the Records in the Sight of the King, Petamenophis.(4)
The king is not named, but his identity is revealed by an inscription,
also reproduced by Lepsius, on a wall in the northern part of the great
outer courtyard. Though much damaged in the course of time it contains
two names, still clearly legible: Petamenophis, and next to it a cartouche
of King Haremhab.(5)

The tomb was later visited and described separately by
Wilkinson, by Duemichen, and others, before Maspero, seeing its deteriorating
condition and realizing the necessity of protecting it from despoliation,
had it sealed at the end of the last century. It remained closed until
1936 when W. F. von Bissing obtained permission to re-open it with the
purpose of performing a definitive survey and publication. Braving the
billions of bats infesting the place and the thick air (the
ventilation shafts left much to be desired) he persevered,
and within two years (1938) published a detailed description of the finds.

Rudolf Anthes and ~. Grapow were entrusted with making
a cast of the inscription with Haremhabs cartouche and found that
the name [Haremhab] stands out quite clearly steht
der name völlig deutlich da ).

Next arose the question of the tombs date and
the time of Petamenophis career. The archaeologists were unable
to agree, except that on stylistic grounds it could not be earlier than
Ethiopian time. Unfortunately, von Bissing wrote, in
the entire vast tomb, not a single indication was found that would directly
yield a date. (6) But was not the
cartouche of Haremhab just the sought-for indication? In the context of
the accepted chronology Haremhabs named carved next to that of the
tombs owner was rejected as an anachronism, and since no other royal
name was found, the date of the tomb was held to be in doubt. Anthes nevertheless
arrived at what appears to be the correct estimate when he placed it in
the time of Tirhaka.(7)

Year 59 Under Haremhab. A legal document
in hieroglyphics composed under Ramses II refers to a contract concluded
under Haremhab, and gives, without any further amplification, the fifty-ninth
year.(8)

Haremhab did not rule Egypt anywhere that long. No era
is known in Egyptian history to which the figure could apply. Much was
written on the subject, but without a satisfying solution.

It was proposed that Haremhab counted as his own the years
of the heretical pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty: Akhnaton, Smenkhkare,
Tutankhamon and Ay.(9)
But it is now admitted that such a solution would require the sole reign
of Haremhab to have lasted not less than twenty-seven years, while his
dated monuments cease after year eight,(10)
indicating that he reigned but eight years after being crowned.

In the light of the understanding here presented of the
true time and role of Haremhab, the thought must come that the fifty-ninth
year refers to an Assyrian era. On February 26, -747 started the
era of Nabonassar; this era was still in use in the second Christian century
when Claudius Ptolemy, the Alexandrian scholar, wrote his astronomical
treatises.(11)

The year 59 in the era of Nabonassar is the year 689 or
688 before the present era. About this time Tirhaka came from Ethiopia
and occupied Egypt. This leads us to the conclusion that the document
in question was written at the very end of Haremhabs reign, just
before he was expelled by the Ethiopian king and fled by sea. A few months
later Sennacherib embarked on his second campaign against Judah and Egypt.

J. R. Harris, How Long Was the Reign
of Horemheb? The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 54 (1968),
95ff.

It is often asserted that the Era of Nabonassar
was Ptolemys invention; but it is a fact that one of the most
important of the Babylonian historical texts, the so-called Babylonian
Chronicle (B.M. 92502), starts with the reign of Nabonassar,
or the year -747. See H. Winckler and J. N. Strassmeier, Zeitschrift
für Assyriologie, II (1887), pp. 163-168. Cf. D. J. Wiseman,
Chronicles of Chaldean Kings (London, 1956), pp. 1-2.